Her face was rather round than oval and the chin was dimpled. The mouth, too, when she smiled caused other dimples to leap into play, and one could easily imagine that she very often did smile. The eyes, large and dark, laughed and danced beneath a pair of perfectly drawn brows, fairly thick and arching, and tapering down to a point that looked like a single hair at their ends. Her cheeks, tanned a delicious brown by the Cornish sun, were a little flushed with excitement.
"Mr. Sydney, is it not?"
Edward bowed and raised his hat.
"And you are the Princess Miranda," he said.
The girl put a finger to her smiling lips.
"Not that here, Mr. Sydney—here, in Tremoor, I am Miss Galva Baxendale—my friends would not know me by any name but that."
She turned as she spoke and preceded him up the little path, bordered by clumps of hydrangea, veronica and fuchsia, to the house. The garden on either side of the shingle path, a curious mixture of vegetables and flowers, glowed with all the tints of autumn.
At the door of the house a lady was awaiting them, a white-haired woman of some fifty years of age, tall, and with the most piercing black eyes Edward had ever seen. She received him graciously, and led the way into a room to the right of the little passage. It was an apartment larger than one would have looked for in a house of the size, and was low-ceilinged and lighted by two diamond-paned windows which looked over the moor.
The walls, papered a dull grey-green, were wainscoted to the height of an elbow with dark oak, and were hung with etchings and engravings, mostly of local scenery, in narrow black frames. The table laid for luncheon was tastefully decorated with little silver pots containing slender ferns, and in the centre a tall glass held a sheaf of late campions.
Edward felt at ease immediately with his two hostesses, and he appreciated to the full the well-served meal. The subject of the "mission" of Mr. Sydney was not touched upon until coffee had been brought, then—